JOURNAL OF THE IRISH LABOUR HISTORY SOCIETY

108 SAOTHAR 13made. A copy of this material was then sent to the IALHI Archives in Zurich, and a copy was used aspart of an exhibition in the Orchard Gallery, Derry, depicting the international history of May Daycelebrations.Michael HarkinTyovaen Arkisto, The Finnish Social Democratic ArchivePaasivuorenkatu5B, 00530 Helsinki. Open during winter time, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 11to 5; Tuesday and Thursday, 11 to 8: during summer time, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 10 to 4;Tuesday and Thursday, 10 to 7Tyovaen Arkisto, founded in 1909, forms the oldest and largest private archive dealing with socialand political matters in Finland. It is the central archive for the Social Democratic labour movementand many other labour organisations and contains three thousand shelf metres of material.There are six permanent employees plus a secretary for the Oral History Commission (Tyovaenmuistitietotoimikunta). The archive is run by a foundation and its board contains representatives of thetrade unions, the Social Democratic Party (Suomen Sosialidemokraattinen Puolue), the Workers'Educational League (Tyovaen Sivistysliitto) and of academic circles. The state provides sixty five percent funding with the balance coming from the SDP, the People's Educational Fund (KansanSivistysrahasto), the Association of Labour Tradition (Tyovaenperinne ry) and certain trade unions.The archive uses Dewey's decimal system (a former variation of today's UDK-classification) inarranging material. The provenance is applied inside its collections. The five major collections are:(1) Social Democratic Party with all material over 15 years freely open; (2) trade union movement(Soumen Ammattijarjesto), the Organisation of the Finnish Trade Unions, 1907-30, about eightynational unions and some two thousand local trade unions; (3) about 2,400 local labour associations;(4) biographical including, among others, K.A. Fagerholm, Tellervo M. Koivisto, Pentti Kymensalo,Tyyne Leivo-Larsson, Vaino Leskinen, Matti Paasivuori, Martta Salmela-Jarvinen, Miina Sillanpaa,Yrjo Sirola, Emil Skog, Vaino Tanner, N.R. afUrsin, Edvard V alpas, Niilo Wallari and Axel Ahlstrom;and (5) the Finnish Civil War of 1918.Other major collections include: Finnish Socialist Labour Party (S uomen Sosialistinen Tyovaenpuole,SSTP) 1920-23; Finnish Swedish Labour League (Finlands Svenska Arbetar-forbund); SocialDemocratic League of Workers and Small Farmers (Tyovaen ja Pienviljelijain SosialidemokraattinenLiitto); and the Leagues of Social Democratic Women, Youth, Temperance, Education, TenantFarmers and Athletes. In addition to documents there are 50,000 photographs, thousands of posters,badges and banners.In 1987 the archive's library associated with the collections of the Folk Archive (Kansan Arkisto)and formed an indepenant Library of the Labour Movement (Tyovaenliikkeen Kirjasto) run by theAssociation of Labour Tradition controlled by all the major organisations of the Finnish labourmovement. The library is adjacent to the archive and can easily be visited. The library has threeemployees and some 140,000 volumes. The printed records and histories of many organisations arealso in the library. There is much international material here as well as Finnish .. The Oral History Commission of the labour movement operates from the archive, its activitiesdirected by experts from history, folklore and labour. Begun in 1960, there are now 150,000 pages oftranscripts of over 6,000 persons. They cover the period from the turn of the century to the present.Seven books based on this collection have been published.The 1918 Civil War cut the nation in two. It made the viewpoint of labour unpopular for academicresearch. It was not until the 1970s that labour history enjoyed a renaissance in Finnish universities.